Doesn't Matter, Don't Care

House Republicans claim they're about creating jobs by cutting spending. Several studies, now, including those of non-liberal groups, have crashed the party:

To quickly review, Moody's Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi, an advisor to the McCain/Palin campaign in 2008, found the Republican proposal would result in 700,000 fewer American jobs by the end of 2012. If follows data from the Center for American Progress, which found that the Republican budget plan would force roughly 975,000 Americans from their jobs. And just last week, economists at Goldman Sachs estimated that the GOP proposal would reduce economic growth by as much as 2% of GDP, which would cause the unemployment rate to go up about a point.

Jill Lawrence, meanwhile, goes a little further, and argues that "two independent economic reports, a liberal think tank and four bipartisan reports" all agree that "slashing federal spending this year could cause job losses and threaten the economic recovery."...

...And Lawrence and I both neglected to mention yet another report from the Economic Policy Institute, which evaluated the Republican plan and projected that "cuts of this magnitude would likely result in job losses of just over 800,000."

In case that's not enough, there's this.

And here's the shocker, which I'm sure no one will believe: Congressional teabaggers don't care.

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So what's the deal? Is it, in fact, a conspiracy? Are Republicans so cynical that they're attempting to put brakes on recovery so Obama will lose in 2012? Or is it just that they are so stuck on tax cuts and spending cuts that they'll them no matter the facts, helplessly, like some cosmically perverse form of OCD?

I'm guessing it's both. We've seen, over and over, teabagger willingness to lie about Obama's programs in order to defeat him at whatever cost. And, surely, by now all doubt has been removed as to their disinterest in facts that disprove their dogmata, whether about economics, climate change, or birth certificates. (Huckabee just came up with a new take on that one.) Either way -- or even if there's another explanation -- if they prevail, the country is surely screwed. And the thing is, these damaging cuts do practically nothing to address the deficit. They're simply cold-hearted and feckless symbolism, accomplishing only harm.

Of course, there is another explanation, as I've said repeatedly: they have theirs, and they couldn't care less if you ever get yours...

Tell 'em, Homer.

It Begins

It was inevitable, just as the RWS™ warned. With the end of DOMA, the last and best protection of opposite marriage, the predicable destruction has commenced:

Reports continue to pour in from around the nation today of helpless Americans being forcibly taken from their marital unions after President Obama dropped the Defense of Marriage Act earlier this week, leaving the institution completely vulnerable to roving bands of homosexuals. "It was just awful—they smashed through our living room window, one of them said 'I've had my eye on you, Roger,' and then they dragged my husband off kicking and screaming," ... "Oh dear God, why did they remove the protection provided by this vital piece of legislation? My children! What will I tell my children?" A video communique was sent to the media late yesterday from what appears to be the as-yet unidentified leader of the gay marauders, who, adorned in terrifying warpaint, announced "Richard Dickson of Ames, Iowa. We're coming for you next. Put on something nice."

I don't know about you, but I'm not giving them the satisfaction. I'm getting divorced: that'll show the fey sons of bitches.

Dead Reckoning

There's been a lot death around here, lately. My dad, then my mom. A couple of college classmates. My aunt, last of her generation, has incurable cancer. Kids, young adults, and, always, people in the news. Looking for former patients, I read the obits. Babies and children are there, people who fought "bravely" (it's always bravely), now in the arms of their lord.

Reading such things, I wonder (I mean this seriously, not as my usual religious sarcasm): how do believers see this process playing out on the other side? When people go to their eternal reward, which version of them is it?

In her prime, my mom was a brilliant woman, active and engaged. At the end, there was little left of who she'd been, memories stripped away, cognition below even its very rudiments. It was who she was when she died, but nothing like who she'd been. So. Does life rewind on arrival in heaven? Does she get her memories back? If so, which ones, and to which point? When she was young and beautiful, a skier? But she'd lived only part of her life then, become only a suggestion of who she'd be. Maybe, then, about age forty five? Sixty? How does it work? Is it really her? Who doles out what, and why?

And what of kids? Babies. How can they grow up to be what they would have been, robbed of the experiences coming their way?

I'm serious. Do we all revert to some mean? If so, what was the point of life? If god wanted the two year old up there, will he give her memories, collect on arrival? He'd known them forever, after all. Do they get what was coming to them? Then why not let them have them on planet Earth? Or is it god's pleasure to have forever unformed souls around him? Why would that be? I have a hard time coming upon a religious philosophy that would address this satisfactorily. Maybe reincarnation works as a model; but if, as I infer Christians believe, it's somehow you that lives there, which you would it be, and how is it decided?

Surely it must have something to do with how you lived -- what are heaven and hell for, after all, if not reward for blind faith and punishment for your god-given failings? What is life, if not an incomprehensibly brief yet forever binding audition for eternity? But if the infirmities disappear, then so do the experiences that went with them; and if babies and children are plucked away before having much of a life at all, why bother with life? How does it figure in the equation? If heaven is perfection, surely I wouldn't be "living" with certain memories that I carry around with shame or sadness (Well, we know I won't be there at all, of course; the rules are pretty strict on that.) For old people, some things get erased, maybe; for kids, some are added perhaps? But then, who are these people flitting around up there? And how will you recognize them when you get there? As I'm trying to express, it doesn't make sense that they'd be the people they were when they exited the stage. I can't figure it out.

I'd love to be enlightened.

Balls

It's like waking up on another planet (maybe one in which there's oxygen but only, say, about 10%; and, you know, weird plants and animals with ten legs and seven eyes, yeah, and you're not sure how you got there and maybe there's no way to get back unless it's a dream but it's not but it could have been something you ate) when hearing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad condemn Moammar Khaddafi (pick your spelling, who cares) for shooting at his own people. Really, he did. I don't think the word "hypocrisy" even applies to something like that, any more than "damp" applies to the ocean.

I must say, though, that I felt a little bit of astral projection when I heard that John Boehner was on a golf-gig in Florida, after having condemned President Obama for distracting us from the people's work, during the most impactful budget debate in all of history, on this planet. Because, remember, he's the one that famously said this, about President Clinton. Not long before Clinton balanced the budget over the no-votes of every Republican, leading to the surpluses which Bush turned into unprecedented deficits, leading us to where we are now.

I couldn't care less who plays golf, or when. But he's the one that threw down the marker.

Boehner's no Ahmadinejad. There are matters of degree, of course. But there's still something nearly incomprehensible about people who are so easily able to do the very things they criticize in others, without even a suggestion of irony. I won't claim that it's only tyrants and Republicans who do it. But in them there's a certain ease, a facility, comfort, that speaks of a special kind of mind...

My Point, Exactly

Here's an interview with a researcher, about the decline in the teaching of evolution. Some important points therefrom:

We see two distinct issues here. The first is that students are being cheated out of a sound science education. All nations are increasingly confronted with important policy choices that are informed by science: Should we mandate vaccines for all school children? Should we take costly steps to reduce carbon emissions? How can we most effectively reduce the incidence of chronic diseases? For ordinary citizens to play a meaningful role in democracies tackling these issues, they need to be excellent critical thinkers concerning science. They should not blindly accept scientific findings, whether they come from academia, government or industry. But neither should they believe that scientific debates are simply clashes of opinion and values. A healthy appreciation of the nature of science, the persuasiveness of replication, and respect for the necessary expertise is also essential. When teachers tell their students that they can have their own opinions about the validity of evolutionary biology, they are sending a dangerous message to our future citizens.

On the other hand, the failure to integrate evolution into the general biology class represents a missed opportunity to turn students on to science....

... Evolutionary biology — taught well and thoroughly — offers a great opportunity to convey the nature of science to young people. This is an opportunity most school children are denied.

And it addresses the main problem, that of faith and the closing of the mind:

We estimate that no more than 30 percent of Americans belong to faith traditions that emphasize a strict and literal reading of the Bible that may lead adherents to see a potential conflict between their faith and the findings of evolutionary biology. The contradictions are rooted in beliefs about the antiquity of the earth, Adam and Eve, and the idea that all current animals descend from those on Noah’s ark. ... Nevertheless, these ideas have diffused into the larger population and are held by others whose own pastors, priests and rabbis see no inherent contradiction between scripture and science. I think there are opportunities for those associated with these other faith traditions to better articulate how faith accommodates modern science, and vice verse. ....

... More broadly, many people of faith are drawn to the study of evolution to explore God’s work, and find a spiritual connection in their study of nature. This perspective was common in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries, but is not often enough articulated in current debates about evolution. Maybe that is because nobody has yet stated it more eloquently than Darwin himself:

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

As our worldly problems become more complex and threatening, the response, sadly -- in the US, anyway -- has been to resort to simplicity and ignorance. As it suffuses into our education system, already lacking in much, the future is steadily being pulled away from us. The need of some to ignore reality is translating into the inability of everyone to evaluate data, to be skeptical, to have a rational -- a scientific -- way to address information.

The results are obvious: we're turning away from difficult solutions toward magic. And with increasing frequency we're electing prestidigitators, not leaders, at the very time we need them the most.

Lawman

I know I have some lawyers who are readers here, and at least one judge. So maybe they can provide enlightenment. I have a problem with President Obama's recent stance on DOMA.

Admittedly no legal scholar, I've always thought the law was unconstitutional, and I was very disappointed in Clinton for signing it. Constitutional or not, it was and is, clearly, discriminatory, religious-based, unfounded, hurtful, senseless, useless, and who-knows what else. So I'm with the president when he says it's wrong; the sooner it's off the books the happier I'll be.

But I find myself agreeing with those on the right who are saying he's wrong in his approach. I don't go as far as Mister Screw-around-on-'em-while-they're-dying-and-divorce-'em-before-they're-dead, but as long as the law is the law, he's bound to defend it, isn't he? For him to have said he believes it's unconstitutional and therefore he'll no longer enforce it, isn't within his powers. As I see it.

I'd much preferred it, had he said that, given financial constraints throughout the government, and the important issues facing the Justice Department, he's ordered a prioritizing of efforts, and defense of DOMA is at the bottom of the list. We'll get to it when we've taken care of all the other more pressing issues like terrorism and corruption, and if we don't run out of money to spend on it.

Meanwhile, he could urge Congress to rescind it, or whatever the proper terminology is. The effect would have been the same. The suggestion of executive overreach would be absent.

Or am I wrong?

[Addendum, 8:30 pm: Here's an illuminating article. I was wrong.]

Party People

As has been pointed out in a recent comment thread here, there are some similarities between the pro-union rallies in Wisconsin, and teabagger rallies everywhere. This morning I read an interesting take on the idea. It isn't very long, so here's the whole thing:

There’s something about the union demonstrations in Madison, and the excitement it has caused on the left, that reminds me of the Tea Party. I think I’ve figured it out what it is. The advent of the labor movement is at the heart of the left’s sacred creation myth. The sense on the left that unions are under siege gives them something to fight for with a bracing sense of historically-rooted identity and moral authority. Similarly, the sense on the right that America’s foundational values are under siege gave the Tea Party something to fight for with a bracing sense of historically-rooted identity and moral authority. Of course, the Tea Party has about as much to do with the values of the American founding as John Adams has to do with Raytheon, and public-sector unionism has about as much to do with preventing worker exploitation as Eugene Debs has to do with unfireable $100,000 a year public-school teachers. But it’s nice to have a team, and a noble lineage, and to get out there and really give the bastards who are stealing our country hell.

(No less split along partisan lines, the comments there are generally much more enlightened than those that disagree here. But the author is smarter, and more and better read than me.)

I don't disagree that, in many ways, including enthusiasm across the spectrum and hyperbole at the fringes, from a distance the crowds are similar. But as I said in response to a recent comment, I also think there's a very basic and fundamental difference: on one side, the fears and complaints are mostly made of thin air, deceptively packaged and produced by the very people the protesters would (or should) find most repellant; on the other, what they are saying is demonstrably true, and their rights, their freedoms, if you will, are, in fact, being threatened.

Naturally, I claim the factual high ground here. Given evidence, I might be open to learning the truth is nearer to the middle, if still significantly to the left of the mean.

Teabaggers claim they want their country back, cry that "they're taking away our freedoms," call Obama a Nazi, a socialist, a communist, a Muslim, a foreigner. I've never heard any of them -- and many have been asked -- which freedoms have been removed or even threatened, except in some feverish and sweaty waking dream. Nor has any made a case (plenty of claims, of course, but no case) that the president does Nazi stuff. Painting on a mustache does not make it reich. Sure, there are deficits, and that's something about which to be alarmed. Real enough. But their understanding of the differences between those that preceded and those that followed Obama's election is entirely absent; and their so-called solutions are nonsensical and have always made things worse. Nor are deficits the coherent center of their complaints.

On the other hand, the unions in Wisconsin are demonstrably under attack. Not even conservatives deny that it's about trying to bust them. And whereas there are legitimate arguments to be made on either side of the right of government workers to strike, there's no doubt that what's at stake isn't some imaginary fever dream: it's the explicit end of their rights to collective bargaining. Agree with the concept or not, that's a freedom, and it's on its way to being taken away. And it's their central point.

Further, I can't think of a teabagger equivalent to the fact that the Wisconsin union members agreed to all the give-backs requested by the governor. They did so without striking or shutting down anything. All they want is to retain future bargaining rights. That's not imaginary. And it's nothing like the sort of no-compromise, all-for-us, nothing-for-you stance of teabaggers.

So, yeah. The vision of pro-union demonstrations is energizing to many liberals, and is a welcome pushback against the cynical, heartless, and ineffective budgetary plans of the teabagger Congress. It's just as bracing, I guess, to be in a lefty crowd as a righty one. And whereas I'm sure people can point to excessive rhetoric and signage, to the same sort of over-the-top vitriol that has characterized teabagger rallies and which comes from the mouths of RWS™ round the clock, it doesn't change the essential difference: the people in Wisconsin are in fact being fundamentally threatened in ways that affect their livelihoods; teabaggers are afraid of monsters under their beds and homosexuals in them.

Making Sense In Tough Times

To Make Us Dumber

In its quest to blind its already deaf and dumb audience, Fox "news" adds to its disinformation campaign a "calculator" that purports to show individuals their "share" of the cost of health care reform. Unsurprisingly, it's complete bullsh*t.

For all these reasons, Fox's calculator can't be taken seriously. Its calculations are basically nonsense, and I hope that it dies a quiet death before its numbers are widely repeated without any context. There are many valid reasons to oppose (or support) the health care reform that passed last March, and it's important that we continue to have that debate without resorting to nonsensical numbers.

Gee. The article calls for serious debate, based on serious inquiry.

That'll be the day. Teabaggers will see to that.

What Passes For Logic

John Boehner's response to the news that the Obama administration has decided not to continue defending DOMA: we should be focusing on jobs. So, let's see: not wasting time on something is... not focusing on jobs? Help me understand. Anyone?

And it's divisive. Not doing something is divisive. In ways that non-stop attention to abortion, Planned Parenthood, instead of jobs isn't?

This is not an intelligent man, a serious man. Even when he speaks through his spokesperson, this is not an intelligent man.

Thanks, teabaggers.

Think Or Swim

Asked why he refused to call out Republicans who, in depressingly large numbers, still believe Barack Obama is not a US citizen, John Boehner said, "It's not my job to tell people what to think." I find that amusing in a clarifying sort of way.

Isn't that what all politicians do, all the time? Tell us what to think? Aren't they pretty much wholly committed to convincing people that their ideas (applying the term generously) are worth adopting? The Speaker of the House, third in line for the presidency, isn't in the business of being a thought leader? On health care, deficits, war, and Planned Parenthood?

Of late, for reasons even more unfathomable than Beckian theories on communists and Egypt, there's been an attempt (I'd say it's out of embarrassment, but I don't think the term applies to the RWS™ or R leaders or teabaggers) to toss off those birther numbers as some sort of left-wing conspiracy. Connecting dots visible only on the inside of their skulls, such people as Debra Saunders (and the occasional commenter here) claim the problem is that liberals are "flogging" the story to make conservatives look "like rubes." Creative. It's not that these people are rubes (a refreshingly archaic term) for believing Barack Obama was born in Kenya; it's that liberals keep pointing it out.

I'm still processing...

What makes that proposition particularly laughable is where we started, with John Boner simpering in his seat, coyly refusing to influence thinking on the matter, perish the thought. If, as Ms Saunders claims, birtherism is somehow a liberal plot, why doesn't the titular head of political Republicans do everything he can to shoot it down? Might it just be that he calculates such foolish flames help stoke the fires of resentment and hatred that got him his shiny new office? What are RWS™ about, if not that?

Birtherism -- its evolution and hyping and relentless promotion by the RWS™ and Fox "news" -- does, however, help me understand another and much more opaque mystery: if a majority of potential Republican voters choose to believe, against definitive and unquestionable proof, that our president is foreign-born, it shouldn't be surprising that they also accept the mythologizing about and reject the failures of Ronald Reagan, to believe he was our greatest president ever.

Now that is testimony to the power of the right-wing propaganda and disinformation media coalition. That's strange we can believe in.

Confusing

I remember when Colonel Qaddafi (unusual, isn't it, for a despot to assign himself such a lowly military rank -- plus there are more ways to spell his name than there are for Hannukah) disavowed nukes after we invaded Iraq. It was touted as powerful proof of the power of power: we scared him into submission with the toughness of our tough-guy toughness. Bush was right, so it was said.

Now, when peaceful revolution has occurred in Egypt, suddenly that's the incarnation of evil, fueled by a coalition of communists, Islamists, American leftists, and Barack Obama's henchmen (or is it controllers?); a precursor to some chick named Sharia moving into your neighbor's basement. Many of the RWS™ slammed our president for not supporting Mubarak.

Meanwhile, back in Libya, feather in the neocon cap, our fraidy-cowed pal Muammar is raking protesters with automatic weapons and shooting at them from planes, while calling out America "the superpower." Will the Rushannitysantoroglennists voice their approval of that, too?

What's a patriot to think?

How Does Wiscon Sin, Boys?*

My first experience with a union rep was in a swamp. I'd been working to build a major sewer system through the boondocks: my summer construction job in college. The man had slogged out there to tell me that I had to join the union or quit working. Since I'd spent most of the summer there already (and all of the previous one), and the amount I'd have had to pay was more than I'd earn in the remaining couple of weeks, I quit.

Years later, there was a movement among some employees of my clinic -- which had had about thirty-five docs when I joined, was then up to around two hundred, and is now at over three hundred docs with more than twelve-hundred employees, I think -- to unionize. It didn't succeed; recently, the clinic was named as one of Fortune's top one-hundred companies to work for in the US. (I think it has less to do with whether or not it's unionized than with the fact that it's still owned and operated by the docs themselves, who care about employees in ways not all big corporations do. I'm very proud of the place, and of my contributions to it.)

I'm not a reflexive supporter of unions in all things.

In Wisconsin, though, I think if the unions are successfully busted, it'll be the beginning of the end of any remaining pretense of democracy in the US. Teabagger naivete notwithstanding, it's becoming increasingly clear that the strings of power in the US are being pulled by the super-wealthy. In fact, it's because of teabagger naivete: in their gullible blindness, they've let themselves be manipulated into thinking they're a people's movement, when the exact opposite is true. I've said it before. Paul Krugman's latest opinion piece, not unexpectedly, says it much better:

.... Wisconsin is indeed facing a budget crunch, although its difficulties are less severe than those facing many other states. Revenue has fallen in the face of a weak economy, while stimulus funds, which helped close the gap in 2009 and 2010, have faded away.

In this situation, it makes sense to call for shared sacrifice, including monetary concessions from state workers. And union leaders have signaled that they are, in fact, willing to make such concessions.

But Mr. Walker isn’t interested in making a deal. Partly that’s because he doesn’t want to share the sacrifice: even as he proclaims that Wisconsin faces a terrible fiscal crisis, he has been pushing through tax cuts that make the deficit worse. Mainly, however, he has made it clear that rather than bargaining with workers, he wants to end workers’ ability to bargain. ...

... it’s not about the budget; it’s about the power.

In principle, every American citizen has an equal say in our political process. In practice, of course, some of us are more equal than others. Billionaires can field armies of lobbyists; they can finance think tanks that put the desired spin on policy issues; they can funnel cash to politicians with sympathetic views (as the Koch brothers did in the case of Mr. Walker). [Bloggers note: the Koch brothers are the main money behind teabaggers, as well.] ...

... Given this reality, it’s important to have institutions that can act as counterweights to the power of big money. And unions are among the most important of these institutions.

You don’t have to love unions, you don’t have to believe that their policy positions are always right, to recognize that they’re among the few influential players in our political system representing the interests of middle- and working-class Americans, as opposed to the wealthy. ...

.... There’s a bitter irony here. The fiscal crisis in Wisconsin, as in other states, was largely caused by the increasing power of America’s oligarchy. After all, it was superwealthy players, not the general public, who pushed for financial deregulation and thereby set the stage for the economic crisis of 2008-9, a crisis whose aftermath is the main reason for the current budget crunch. And now the political right is trying to exploit that very crisis, using it to remove one of the few remaining checks on oligarchic influence.

So will the attack on unions succeed? I don’t know. But anyone who cares about retaining government of the people by the people should hope that it doesn’t.

Predictably, teabaggers have showed up in Wisconsin right on cue, unknowingly (one would hope) doing the bidding of those who would complete the coup against their own power. And every time I allow myself the glimmer of hope that they'll wake up to see how they've been used, I get another comment here from the Jersey shores that convinces me I'm wrong. There's no getting through to these people.

Never have so many been so deceived by so few, so easily, into doing so much so clearly against their own interests.

___________________________

* A reference to this, for the culturally deprived.

Making A List

Here are some of the programs so far defunded by House Republicans:

• Planned Parenthood
• EPA regulation of greenhouse gases
• Health care
• National security
• Net neutrality
• Financial regulation
• EPA regulation of pollution from cement plants
• White House advisors
• Research
• Education
• Firefighter grants

They did, however, vote to continue sponsoring NASCAR cars. So there's that. And tax loopholes for oil companies.

Need it be said that Planned Parenthood is about much more than abortion services? Need it be pointed out that pollution is bad for us, even if it costs money to deal with it? That deregulating finance is what, in large measure, got us where we were a mere two years ago?

Next day, they did more:

• • Voted to strip funding from just about every EPA project, including air quality, emissions, and water pollution monitoring.
  • Defunded NOAA
  • Stripped funds to administer the Affordable Care Act.
  • Eliminated funds for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
  • Continued $53 billion in oil subsidies
  • Tried to eliminate Davis-Bacon rules for government projects (that failed)
  • Stripped federal workers of their salaries in positions within agencies targeted for defunding

The thing is that these cuts (which are admittedly not likely to become law) would hurt the most vulnerable people, pander to corporations, and do practically nothing to reduce the deficit. They're symbolism. Which is exactly the point.

In these cuts we can see what the teabagger wing of conservatism is all about: short-term (as in their personal lifetimes) savings for themselves at the expense of everyone else. And of the future. In order to prevent themselves from ever paying more in taxes, they're happy -- eager!! -- to ignore the needs of the country. They call it fiscal responsibility. It's not. It's pure selfishness, rationalized by a heavy dose of willful ignorance, wrapped in an entirely unserious concern about some imaginary future that doesn't exist. These measures completely ignore the hard stuff, the real factors pushing the deficits. It's sandbagging the teabaggers, who, looking for any reason to believe, allow themselves to be played for fools.

Nothing gets the selfish to hop on board like the promise of tax cuts. No one -- not even me -- likes paying them; some, however, recognize the need. It's easy to find wasteful spending in any government program. To those wishing to rationalize taking their money and running from responsibility, it's nice to be able to point to such things. But they're beside the point.

The first person seriously to address Medicare waste was Barack Obama, and, nearly unbelievably, it's been shouted down ever since (despite the fact that it reduces the deficit) by the very people who claim they want fiscal responsibility. It's like Sarah Palin decrying Michelle Obama's push for breast feeding after previously declaring, during her half-ass term governorship, that the government has a stake in promoting it. Anything for politics, hey?

The left isn't scott-free, of course. The mere mention of addressing entitlements sends them into a frenzy. But surely there are ways to do it (Obama already did) that don't affect those who need them the most while getting those who can afford it to pay a little more. And until defense cuts and tax hikes are on the table (credit to teabaggers on the F-35 engine, although they merely did what presidents and defense secretaries have been calling for; and it's a diddly drop in a big bucket), we'll never get anywhere.

Teabaggers are willing to do harm to the present needy and the future everyone in order to die with their pockets full. It takes a special kind of blindness to justify that: in their budget proposals, the lack of seriousness is there to be seen, for anyone interested in looking.

Science Education

Don't let the accent lead you astray: this is Ken Ham, the guy who, with the approval of governors, would destroy education in the US. He already is, with his Creation Museum. The Ark is coming next, floating in on hot tea. Legislatures are lining up to make this sort of "teaching" part of public school curriculum.

Hallelujah, say the teabaggers.

See ya' in the rear-view mirror, say China and India and Japan. Not to mention all of Europe.